Don't pass Pas de Calais

France has a secret, and now you’re in on it. The Seven Valleys is cute, seductive, cheap... and only an hour from Calais

There's an unspoken rule, isn't there? You have to go somewhere nice-sounding on holiday. It needs to roll off the tongue in a filthily Nigellaish "just made some doughnuts" way. Tuscany, with its seductive mozzarella ess; the Dordogne, with its illicit bed-spring oing; Devon, with its vish hint of clotted cream and haystack frolics.

Which is why the Pas de Calais doesn't really make the grade. Pas as in "Pah!". De as in durr, as in stoopid place to go on holiday.

Calais as in Kelly, as in a tart having it off outside a fish'n'chip shop on a rainy, alcopop-fuelled night out with the gels. Announcing it as your prospective holiday destination is like announcing you have Northern Rock shares, or syphilis, or a wife who just ran off with a carpet salesman.